Walt Disney
Manuale delle Giovani Marmotte

Stumbling across this cult book in PDF edition online (freely downloadable here) was a blast from the past, triggering an uncontrollable wave of nostalgia even for a big guy like me.

In 1970 (or around those years), this finely bound little book, which would make anyone laugh today, was a kind of "passport" to the Great Adventure. The repressed dream of emancipation from parents and the desire to know how to take care of ourselves, in worlds made of tropical jungles, improvised camping, and survival kits against hypothetical bear attacks, which the grown-ups knew had been extinct in Italy for at least 40 years.

Thinking back on the silly things we imagined (not having other means!), I'm surprised I didn't end up as a sergeant major in charge of mooring buoys at the Sarzana harbor.

This "Manuale delle Giovani Marmotte" (published by Mondadori, followed by dozens of sequels after the great success of the original, more or less along the same lines), was a book full of ideas, games, and little things that, however, represented an intelligent and "bare-bones" way to keep our young minds active in short pants, bobbed hair, and with a black and white TV always on, on the doily in the living room.

Cursed those years.

And yet.

And yet, we learned to build a kite (for instance: here, something nobody cares about anymore), we knew how to build an improvised tent with wood and dry branches, we improvised a telephone to communicate over distances or wrote messages in invented absolutely secret codes (see here). Not to mention how to transmit thoughts, how to use a watch as a compass, how to kill a mosquito with morning breath, and more.

In short, the incentive for imagination and to get our little wheels turning was definitely there... oh yes.

Today, however, kids of 9/10 years old (and I know quite a few) know how to navigate the controls of a PS3 or Wii much faster but when it comes to imagination and brainpower... let's just draw a thick curtain!

I wonder if I'll get to see them head some government even more incompetent than the current one... and here I admit, it takes a lot of imagination, doesn't it?